Igniting the Embers
by Polargeshi
Summary: Part One of the Fire, Ice and Rage Trilogy. Oliver Lindon, a 23-year-old guy from Cambridge, has nearly given up on life until the Doctor saves him from an imminent death. He follows the magic man to the stars, but will his growing affection for the Doctor consume him? And will the Doctor ever learn to show his true feelings to anyone?
1. Prologue

Fandom: Doctor Who  
Pairing: 10th Doctor / Oliver Lindon (OC)  
Rating: M, due to explicit scenes and adult themes in the following chapters.  
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Angst  
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or the characters, script or anything else related to it.  
 **A/N:** The script excerpts of this chapter were taken from the episode 3x00, 'The Runaway Bride'. On a side note, this story is my first attempt at an OC character.

 **Prologue**

My name is Oliver Lindon. It is Christmas Day, 2007.  
Just a mere fortnight before I met the Doctor.

' _Oh, no. I forgot you hate Christmas.'  
_ ' _Yes, I do.'  
_ ' _Even if it snows?'_

I can see them now, in the distance. The Doctor, once again, about to set off in his magical blue box – a place I eventually started to call my home – and Donna, the brave woman, that's what he said her name was. I can hear their words echoing in the night, off the empty pavement of the street; this is the past, only now I know how the story unfolds. I can see the faint hope gleaming in the Doctor's deep, brown eyes as he stands there, one hand casually leaning on the TARDIS, as if saving the mankind was everyday business to him. I can almost sense his thoughts: this might be the chance, the end of loneliness, the Doctor's final day of solitude after he lost her… Rose. Oh, how he loved her! I will never learn to understand how much they felt for each other, but – the Doctor doesn't want to replace her; he needs someone to guide him, to accompany him, the sole survivor, the last of his kind. Only Donna has other plans – and this is the reason I was brought here, to this singular moment in the infinitude of time. I'm here to witness how Donna Noble bids farewell to the Doctor.

He is tempting her, the way only the Doctor can. He reaches in the TARDIS, pulls a lever – that's all it takes, for the magical man with the flying police box – and suddenly the dark winter sky is pouring with snow. The stream of snowflakes, outshining the glistening pearls of her tiara – the snowflakes, falling on her wedding gown, disappearing amidst the glimmering details of the dress… The snowflakes, entangled in his ravishing, windswept hair, gathering on the same tan trench coat that he wore the day he carried me away from that burning rubble… The frail snowflakes, they melt on his sharp cheekbones that I constantly long to caress with every aching bone in my body, and they disappear, running down on his cheeks like the tears of a Time Lord that he never shows to anyone… Until I came along.

' _But really… Everything we did today – do you live your life like that?'  
_ ' _Not all the time.'  
_ ' _I think you do. And I couldn't.'_

The Doctor was right about her – she's a wonderful, brave woman, and she speaks the truth. I can feel how her words remind the Doctor of the inevitable, and my eyes are filling with tears as I witness the unfolding discussion. The falling snowflakes around me, their fragility reminds me of the countless people swept away by time, as the Doctor lives on – the ancient, immortal Time Lord, who is forced to stand by and watch as generations of human lives begin and end in a blink of an eye. No-one can escape from time, not even the greatest of the Time Lords. It creeps up on us, takes everything away from us and consumes us to the bone. Even the ones, who claimed to be the Masters of Time, those who learnt to traverse the Time Vortex like the mankind learnt to cross the vastness of the seas and the skies – they were eventually destroyed by the very thing they attempted to subdue. It drove them to the brink of insanity and beyond, to an endless series of wars and tragedies, culminating in terrible losses and suffering, leaving only one to carry on the devastating legacy, the Doctor. Time spares no-one. All this, he revealed to me, during those nights we spent together in the TARDIS, when I held on to his body so tightly, carefully listening to every word of the stories he told me about Gallifrey, distant galaxies, the Time Lords and exotic planets, the Time Wars… His stories always moved me to tears, and when he felt the first teardrop on his chest, he gently put a a finger on my lips, whispering 'Allons-y, off to sleep!', closing me in his warm embrace. And I closed my eyes and listened to that familiar quadruple beat of his two hearts which eventually lulled me to sleep.

' _Am I ever going to see you again?_ '  
' _If I'm lucky._ '

I keep wondering how she arrived to that decision. Did she have the foresight to spare herself from a tragedy that possibly awaited her? People have said that the Doctor is the harbinger of misfortune, the storm that leaves nothing but misery on its trails, the constant companion of death – was she going to end up like the others before her, lost in time or trapped in another dimension?

What's going to happen to me? What is my fate in his hands?

Before the Doctor, I had given up. My goals, dreams, pursuits, childhood ideals, hope for a better future – I had silenced them, buried and locked them somewhere deep inside of me so that I would never have to face certain things again. I was readily settling for what I thought was my unescapable fate, my personal damnation – I had destined myself to drift away in the darkness of my hollow life, like a distant star fallen out of its orbit, until the Doctor passed my way. He saved my life – like the lives of so many unbelievably lucky people before me, as I later became to realise. Not only did he spare me from an imminent death – of which I will forever be grateful to him – carrying me away from that burning rubble I was trapped in before the flames engulfed me, but he also saved me from wasting the little precious time I have to spend in this universe. Why? The Doctor has his reasons, he always does. If you have the patience, eventually you will understand why he was there for you at one precise moment in time.

 _Patience_ … He always smirks when I ask him questions, demand facts or request him to take me to stellar systems about which I have only read in books, or distant worlds whose existence the mankind is still blissfully unaware of. _Impatience_ , he says, is what he loves about us; how the mankind wields a double-edged sword with its eagerness to advance beyond Earth, attempting to launch itself to the stellar age too soon… ' _Everything has its time_ ', he says. Maybe, eventually, I will learn to understand what he truly means by that.

' _Just promise me one thing. Find someone._ '

Once I was told, they say he's like _fire and ice and rage_.

 _Fire_ – when I first saw him, advancing towards me when the burning building began to collapse around us, he was surrounded by raging flames. He moved through the raging inferno, and the flames disappeared from his way, as if they were afraid of him! The ravaging fire obeyed the Doctor, like the court kneels down before the king. And in his eyes – those magnificent, dark hazel eyes – I have seen such ardour, such vigour – such ferocious intensity, when he set my dormant passions ablaze with his eyes and made love to me billions and billions of light years away at the edge of the universe. He fills me with his passion, and I will never look back. I have surrendered myself to him.

' _I don't need anyone._ '

 _Ice_ – the frozen sorrow inside of him, it runs deep, like a piercing stream of pain. His answer to Donna is bold but laden with feelings much deeper than he allows others to see. The Doctor is _ancient and forever_ , he has witnessed so much suffering during the passing of the centuries that the sorrow has hardened him. The Doctor is not omnipotent; he has his weaknesses. When sorrow becomes too great to surmount, the Doctor consigns it to his soul, where it gathers, like an impenetrable glacier… A glacier that forms slowly, enclosing his soul with the centuries of sorrow, forming the deep layers of ice on which his cold tears cascade – the glacier that I had to brave to understand the pain of the Doctor. I touched him. I felt his distress. And I will be there when he needs me as much as I need him.

' _Yes, you do. Because sometimes, I think you need someone to stop you._ '

 _Rage_ – I have witnessed the Doctor's rage. There's a part of him, so violent and ferocious that it boils like the fiery depths of Hell, and Hell was what he took me into – the endless maelstrom of emotions that I was pulled in the day his lips touched mine for the first time… The violent winds in the turmoil of his soul that nearly tore me to pieces when he allowed me to see his inner self… _He'_ _s like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun_. And when he unleashes his rage, for a reason or another, it's the most frightful thing imaginable. He holds the power to tear worlds apart – I saw it, I survived it. And I will be there to stop him.

 _'That friend of yours. What was her name?'_  
 _'Her name was Rose.'_

The TARDIS hums as it dematerialises, and suddenly, it shoots up to the sky, disappearing in the sky among the falling snowflakes. The time of the farewell is over; the Doctor brought me here, in the past, a mere fortnight before the day he saved my life, to witness the events that made him arrive to a decision that irreversibly changed our lives, forever. He is standing behind me, closing me in his warm embrace, to protect me from the cold winter air; I'm shaking, my eyes are welling with tears, and I can feel his arms tightening around me as I sigh, as if he could sense what I am feeling right now.

'Do you see it now, Oliver?' He whispers to my ear, gently kissing my neck; I can feel the light stubble on his chin pressing against my skin, sending tiny sparks down my spine, igniting my feelings for him all over again. Now that I've seen it unravelling before my eyes, I understand.

'I do,' I say, as I draw him near for a passionate kiss.

My name is Oliver Lindon. And this my the story of how I, the insignificant 23-year-old guy from Cambridge, was saved by the greatest man of the universe. This is my account of how I, the unimportant coffee shop attendant, who had given up on his life and whose existence made no difference whatsoever, became the travelling companion of the Doctor, an interstellar time traveller, following the footsteps of the multitude of people who accompanied him on his adventures through time and space before me. This is my recital of the unbelievable events that led me to consider the Doctor, the last surviving member of the oldest and mightiest civilisation of the universe, more than just my closest confidant – the events that made me regard him with feelings I had never discovered before. This is the tale of the moments when the Doctor revealed his true self to me, meeting my feelings for him with something a mere human being would never experience.

My name is Oliver Lindon.  
And this is the story of how I fell in love with a Time Lord.


	2. Chapter 1

**Fire  
** **Part I: Igniting the Embers**

 **Chapter 1**

The day I met the Doctor dawned like any other unmemorable weekday on Green Mill Drive, a suburb street in Cambridge. It was a Wednesday, 9th of January, to be exact; I woke up in my upstairs room in the middle-class semi-detached house I lived in with my mother as the alarm went off at 6.30 AM. My day at the coffee shop was starting in three hours, followed by an evening Open University seminar in the city; I would not be back at home until the late evening. The night had been chillier than usual. I don't mind the cold and I rarely sleep with any clothes on, but in spite of the red jersey trunks and the grey marl t-shirt I had to wear to bed that night, I found myself trembling. Yawning, I got up, turning the wooden blinds on the window next to my bed in hopes of being greeted with some snow on the street, but I knew I was asking for too much: the view appeared to be as bare and murky as usual. East Anglia and Southern England had received barely any snowfall at all during the winter months, with the exception of an unusual snowstorm in Chiswick on the evening of Christmas Day, which the newspapers had somehow managed to squeeze in between the scoops and questionable eyewitness accounts on the 'Death Star' incident that night.

The world was witnessing the dawn of a new era, the space age: an alien ship crashing into Big Ben, the latest extraterrestrial incident in London, odd rumours about a man and a flying police box circulating on certain obscure Internet message boards that I frequented… Nonetheless, so far I had been feeling oddly indifferent towards all the strange events of the past few years, considering that I devoted most of my free time to amateur astronomy, the one pastime that had kept me going for quite some time now. If only I had known on that frosty January morning that on the same day, I was about to be greeted with the greatest extraterrestrial being in all history.

I got up and undressed, pulling up the wrinkled t-shirt and shaking off the red jersey trunks that had tightened uncomfortably as they attempted to contain my growing morning erection. Shivering, I covered my upper body with my arms as a vain attempt to warm up as I gave a brief look at my naked reflection in the floor-length mirror on the wall – lean body, pale skin, hollow cheekbones, faint freckles, messy, dark auburn hair, tired, olive green eyes, reddish stubble, macilent frame, slender legs that my big sister jokingly called toothpicks, a fine trail of auburn hair that started from my navel, going down… This was Oliver Lindon, the insignificant 23-year-old guy from Cambridge, working as a barista at a campus coffee shop in the city while taking evening Open University classes in astronomy. That's a nice way of putting it. From my perspective, I spent the days at my menial day job, attempting to decipher the pretentious coffee orders of upper-class university students, who probably thought no more of me than I thought of myself. During the evenings, I kept myself busy with the little hobby of mine that I had used to preserve my sanity since I was nine. Not that it would ever develop into something significant – or that's what I believed back then.

I threw my sleeping attire in the laundry bin and grabbed my garnet bath towel from the rack attached to the door, tying it around my waist; the dry terrycloth fabric rubbed pleasantly against the growing stiffness between my legs, sending shivers down my spine. Opening the door, I could hear my mother making breakfast downstairs. I nipped quietly across the landing to the bathroom on other side, locking the door behind me. The bathroom window was covered in a delicate layer of frost, through which the amber rays of the rising sun beamed. My mother had furnished the room with what she considered elegant: the shelves were filled with liniments, bath oils and scented candles, and the various surfaces abounded with homely decorations from Woolworths and painted plaques with trivial aphorisms carved in them. Dropping the towel on a fluffy bath mat, I picked a flask containing musky bath foam and spilt some in the sizeable bathtub while turning on the chrome taps, allowing the noise of the pouring hot water muffle the sounds of what I was about to do next.

I positioned myself in front of the washbasin and leant back, slowly stroking my hardened member with my right hand while fondling my balls and caressing my tender, erect nipples with the left. The arousing scent of musk and the warm, humid mist rising from the bathtub permeated the room, relaxing my sore muscles, calming down the lashing waves of shivers and fuelling my imagination. I stared at myself in the mirror of the wooden medicine cabinet above the washbasin, whose surface steamed up as I panted heavily. Attempting to tone down my subtle moaning, I allowed my thoughts to drift away to something pleasant, mostly to the undressed image of my former boyfriend Derek, with whom I had broken up in July. Needless to say, I was still shamelessly conjuring him up in my thoughts whenever I needed a satisfying release, his chiselled jawline and those endearing dimples which surfaced when he smiled at me, those hard and defined abs that he had earned at the Boat Club – I was reminiscing on those nights when he pushed me against the checkered sheets of his bed and entered me, moved in to me and claimed me, over and over again, holding me firmly in my place and climaxing inside of me, with his firm rower's body collapsing on top of me as I nearly fainted with pleasure—

The pressure was now becoming too much to handle, and I closed my eyes, tightening the grip around my member and commencing a series of furious strokes until I climaxed, exploding all over the handbasin and the ceramic tiles. Heaving, once the ripples of pleasure had waned away, I looked at my sweaty face once again, feeling slightly guilty about what I had just imagined in my mind. Even after six months, I was still hanging on to Derek, even though, apparently, he had already been seeing somewhere else for quite some time now. I sighed, cleaning after myself and carefully stepping into the steaming-hot bubbly bath. I sat down and closed my eyes, sighing once again, as the soapy bubbles surrounded me and the hot water closed me in its warm, comfortable embrace. This was my morning routine; it had been such for a long time now. There had been no-one after Derek, which my mother seemed to be rather concerned about, dropping subtle hints about parties and singles' nights she had heard of from her co-workers – maybe I was supposed to find it embarrassing that the social life of my 49-year-old divorced mother was more active than mine, but I no longer cared. Getting over the initial depression after losing Derek had almost been too much to take, and ever since I managed to pull myself back together, I had been feeling like I couldn't face the relationship game again. I didn't allow myself to realise it back then, but I clearly wasn't over him. However, while I was relaxing in the foamy bath on that chilly Wednesday morning, pondering my guilty feelings for him, I was completely unaware that before the day was over, I would meet the man who would make me forget Derek Fletcher, the handsome star of the University Boat Club, for good.

The garishly ornate cuckoo clock on the wall of the landing had already struck eight as I finished dressing up in my room. I descended the stairs to the downstairs dining area which was connected to the kitchen where my mother was setting about her morning routines. Having stayed in the bath for too long, I was slightly behind schedule, but my mother didn't seem to have paid attention to it; after housing her only son for more than twenty years, she was probably quite used to giving me the space that I needed. The familiar tackiness of the clock always reminded me of my parents: my mother Diane, a mid-level sales executive, had designed it and my father Ennis, an Irish carpenter, had assembled it when my sister and I were still little. When it comes to crafts and handiwork, I'm all fingers and thumbs, however; I obviously didn't inherit it from him.

I entered the kitchen. The small television on the corner counter had the morning news on, and my mother stood at the hob, cooking something that smelled like fried vegetables.

'Good morning, mum.' I went and kissed her on the cheek.

'Morning, sweetie! Slept well? You look a bit weary.' She gave me an unnecessarily concerned look.

'Yeah, I'm alright. It was a cold night; I kept tossing and turning for awhile. What are you cooking?' I could smell the scent of herbs and carrots floating around. This must have been a recipe from her new organic cookbook that I gave her as a Christmas gift.

'A vegetarian omelette with carrots, dear; you should try some, you look a bit pallid. Shall I make you one as well? There's still a plenty of mixture left.'

'Thanks mum.' I didn't want to say no, even though my breakfast usually consisted of a generous bowl of Lucky Charms and a few pieces of burnt toast with jam. Due to my unnecessarily fast metabolism, I never managed to put on much weight or grow my muscles even if I wanted to, but it didn't stop my mother from worrying about my appearances.

'It's alright dear; I already put a few slices in the toaster for you, for starters.'

She continued to survey me from the corner of her eye while stirring the greenish omelette in the pan, as I rose to fetch the pieces of toast that had just popped up from the toaster. I could feel her concerned gaze burrowing into my back as I sat down at the breakfast bar, smothering the crisp, overdone pieces with a hefty layer of raspberry jam. I couldn't tell whether she was doing it because of my appearances, my aforementioned lack of social life or my unbalanced breakfast; I had already lost count on the numerous health and fitness fads my mother was following, but at least she wasn't nagging about my morning intake of sugar and carcinogens anymore after I had managed to ignore it long enough.

My mother finished the omelettes and brought them over to the breakfast bar, sitting on the bar stool next to me and grabbing the newspaper, pretending to be interested in it. I focused on my omelette as the morning news show hosts went on about some worrying news about the economy which didn't raise my interest.

'Oliver…' She started, suddenly.

'Yes, mum?' I knew what was coming.

'I heard they're hosting some event in that club, on Friday next week – remember? You used to go there w…' She interrupted herself, obviously looking for words to replace what she was about to say.

'With _Derek_ , mum,' I blurted. 'I'm not allergic to that word, you know.'

'…With _Derek_ , yeah,' She replied, raising her eyebrows. 'Why don't you go? With your friends, perhaps? There might be some nice people there, who knows?'

'I'll think about it.'

We sat in silence for awhile, while the television news report on the background continued. I felt bad for snapping at her like that.

'Sorry, mum.'

'It's alright sweetie.' She gave me a kiss on my forehead. 'Now, finish your omelette before it goes cold.'

It was almost quarter to nine when I finally finished with my breakfast.

'I have to hurry now or else I'll miss the bus, mum.'

'Alright sweetie. Have a nice day, see you in the evening!'

I kissed her goodbye and went to get dressed in the small vestibule next to the dining area. Having put on my grey overcoat and brown leather boots, I grabbed my shoulder bag and stepped out on the street, hurrying to the bus stop.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

My breath vaporised in the cold winter morning as I strode the frosty street towards the bus stop; in spite of my warm winter garments, I was shivering again. I was still halfway to my destination when a colourful double-decker appeared around the corner, which prompted me to break into a desperate sprint to reach it in time. Huffing and puffing, I caught the bus just in time; the driver took off as I was still climbing upstairs, and I tripped, barely managing to catch the handrail and narrowly avoiding a broken jaw with a few lost teeth; that would have provided an interesting twist to the mundane morning! Cursing at my clumsiness, I stumbled towards the back and sank down on the patterned pair of seats, avoiding the bemused looks of the other morning commuters.

Turning my iPod on and selecting some calming music, I took my seminar notes, which I had scribbled down during the last session, out of the shoulder bag and attempted to do some reviewing, as the bus zigzagged along the winding streets of the suburbs of Cambridge towards the city. However, I was feeling too restless to focus on my notes and I let myself drift into my thoughts again as I gazed at the passing familiar landscape. I reprimanded myself for being unable to stop thinking about Derek, whom I should have left in the past a long time ago; our break-up wasn't dramatic, and we were supposed to remain on friendly terms, but I hadn't spoken to him in months in spite of his numerous attempts at contacting me. I simply couldn't face him or the fact that he didn't belong to me anymore. I began to contemplate what my mother had suggested me before I had left for work; maybe it was indeed time to move on, to go out and have some fun for once, meeting someone – high time to stop wallowing in self-pity or indulging in my twisted fantasies of the star of the University Boat Club, but gathering the courage to step out of my comfort zone was becoming an awfully painful task.

The bus reached the city in about half an hour, and I had just enough time to walk to the coffee house before I was late for work. I got in to the back room through the rear entrance, which was situated along a quiet alleyway behind the row of shops and offices along the busy street. I changed and put on my apron, preparing myself for another day filled with snobbishly complicated coffee orders. I counted every minute until the clock struck half five, when it was time to leave for my seminar.

* * *

That night my seminar finished at quarter to eight. This was my second year studying astronomy in Open University, and the current theme of my seminar, a close-knit group of diverse people with one common interest, was astrophysics. My mother had worked hard to persuade me to attend OU in the first place, and I did enjoy it, now that I had already settled in nicely. I would describe myself as reserved, rather than reclusive; sometimes it simply takes awhile for me to warm up towards other people, which other people sometimes wrongly interpreted as arrogance.

Unlike the evening before, the weather was now pleasantly mild, and in order to save some time, I decided to take a shortcut through the nearby college grounds, which involved walking along a long, secluded series of cloisters, which had once formed a part of a twelfth-century nunnery. Others might have found the darkness and the shadows of the mediaeval structures frightening, but I had always enjoyed the grandeur of the old archways and the calming serenity of the evenings as I returned home from my seminars.

I was about to reach the end of the final cloister, which lead to a large, shadowy garden area, when an odd noise suddenly broke the nightly silence. I stopped, listening to my surroundings: something was emitting strengthening waves of an unfamiliar sound; it seemed to be nearby, probably in the garden, around the corner. I had never heard anything like that odd, wheezing noise before; it sounded like a distorted, electric trumpet of some sort, or a giant violin bow scraping a set of untuned piano strings to and fro. The waves of noise ceased as suddenly as they had started, culminating in a loud, booming sound, which reverberated down the cloister, as if something tremendously heavy had just reached the garden ground. I stood still and kept listening: the silence of the night resumed uninterrupted. Unable to resist my curiosity, I took a few furtive steps ahead and glanced around the corner, hiding behind a stone pillar.

About twenty feet away from me, a blue police box stood in the shadowy corner of the garden, under an old, gnarled oak tree. The lamp on top of the roof was flashing and casting vague streaks of blue light on the thick stone walls of the surrounding buildings. What was it doing here, and more importantly, _why_? I approached the box with cautious steps; it looked quite out of place on the college grounds, because those things disappeared from the streets decades ago, and the few remaining callboxes around the UK only served as tourist attractions and protected relics. I had used this shortcut countless times before, and I was absolutely sure the police box hadn't been there before.

Suddenly, the front door of the box began to open slowly, with its old hinges squeaking; I gasped, as somebody stepped out.

'Who are you? What am I doing here?'

I was as flabbergasted at his words as he apparently was at meeting me. I had never come across a man like him in my life: he was tall, with a slender but firm frame, approximately in his late thirties or early forties; wild, chestnut-brown hair and striking sideburns, dark eyebrows and deep, enticing eyes. I blushed, at the most inappropriate moment, as he surveyed me with a puzzled look on his face, leaning against the blue doorjamb while an unusual, amber glow emanated from inside the box, yielding a seraphic hue to his powerful figure. The man stepped out from the police box to the garden, sporting a soigné ensemble of clothes – a tan, billowing overcoat, a blue four-button suit with slim lapels, a white shirt with a thin burgundy tie and cream-coloured Converse boots, whose mismatching juxtaposition with the rest of the outfit only made the distinctiveness of his style more defined – and started advancing towards me, pulling something metallic from his pocket. I snapped out of my flushed state and took a step backwards.

'I warn you – do not come any closer, or I…. Or I…'

'…You what, now?' he asked curiously and leaned closer to my face, removing his dark, square spectacles and squinting at me as if he was examining a laboratory project. I swooned when his countenance met mine; his facial features were soft but well-defined – an aquiline nose, high, sharp cheekbones, faint freckles, thin lips and a strong chin—

'…Or I'll call the police!' I snapped back, coming back to my senses, once again scolding myself for behaving ridiculously. It took him by a surprise and he retreated.

'Oh dear, by all means; I assume the emergency line next to the door still works,' he mumbled, pointing at the police box behind him. 'No need for that attitude, either; I'm only trying to figure out why I'm here in the first place…'

The man was obviously not taking me seriously, but taking him seriously was proving to be even more challenging, as he started to circle me, still inspecting me from head to toe as if he had never seen another living human being before. Finally, he stopped, returning back to his former position and pointing me with the futuristic device he had drawn from his pocket which was now producing high-pitched, whirring sounds and casting blue light at my direction. At that moment, in the light of the past events, it occurred to me that perhaps I was not dealing with an ordinary human being.

'You're not from this planet, are you?' I inquired self-consciously, as if my question was somehow rude and inappropriate.

'Oh, you're clever! I don't think anyone has figured it out so quickly before,' he remarked, still aiming his silvery device across various parts of my body. 'This is my sonic screwdriver, by the way, if you're wondering, it usually follows in the natural continuum of questions whenever someone new comes along; don't worry, it's harmless, I'm only trying to find out whether there's something wrong with you that requires my urgent attention…'

'…Thanks?'

'Anything else? Go ahead and ask, now that you still have the time… Where was I again?…' he interrupted himself. 'Oh YES! Why am I here?' he exclaimed.

'How am I supposed to know?!' I snapped again.

'What's so significant about this patch of lawn that she blatantly ignored me and took over the controls?' he said, ignoring my previous comment and pointing the grass with his screwdriver.

'Who did?'

'My spaceship!' He pointed at the blue box.

'You fly with that? In space?' I was astounded. 'Can you accelerate beyond light speed with that? What galaxy are you from? Milky Way, Andromeda, from the Local Cluster or even further away?' I wasn't sure whether my questions made any sense to him – maybe they addressed those celestial bodies with different names out there.

He turned his gaze back to me and his eyes lit up, as if he had just discovered something significant. 'No… it's _You_ – _You_ are important!… But why? Why did she bring me to you? Why do you matter?'

'… _Rude_.' The blatant inappropriateness of his words almost made me laugh. 'Who are you?… _What_ are you?' I demanded.

'I'm a traveller.'

'But you must have a name, what do they call you?'

'I'm the Doctor.' He smiled.

'The Doctor of what? Physics? Medicine?' I blurted before I realised how ridiculous my question was.

He grinned. 'You'll see.'

The man turned around and started walking back to the police box.

'Will I see you again?' I asked, feeling severely disappointed to see him go.

He turned around, smiling. 'I have a feeling that you will.'

He stepped inside the police box, closing the door behind him. Another loud boom ensued, and the waves of humming noises returned, as the police box began to dematerialise in front of my eyes! In a few seconds, it had disappeared, and the familiar darkness of the night engulfed the garden. Only dying gusts of wind remained, scattering dead leaves about the dormant lawn where the police box had just stood. I couldn't believe what I had just seen: I had just encountered an extraterrestrial being! My mind was filled with questions: why did an alien look like a trend-setting white-collar office clerk, who spoke perfectly fluent Estuary English, and why did his spaceship, which was almost disappointingly modest in size, look like an exact replica of a British police box? He never told me what he was or where he was from, but he did say that I was going to see him again – what did that mean? Was he somehow coming back to meet me, or was I supposed to find him? Furthermore, I was mortified by my own reaction to the whole incident – there I was, becoming one of the few, lucky people to stand in the frontline of mankind's encounters with otherworldly beings by simple chance, and all I could do is swoon over an alien! Instead of focusing on his breath-taking chestnut-brown hair or those dark, alluring eyes, I should have demanded him to take me to the stars! Then again, his words suggested that this was not going to be our last encounter, so maybe I still had my chance. I hoped that he was going to keep his word.

Suddenly, I realised that it was already quarter past nine, and I had missed the usual bus home. Texting my mother that I was going to arrive home later than usual, I left the college grounds.

* * *

The lights in the kitchen were still on when I reached my home later in the evening. My mother was still up; I could see her through the net curtains, drinking tea at the dining table, absorbed in a novel. I went in, spending a moment in the vestibule in order to compose myself before entering the dining area, because I didn't want my mother to know about what had happened. She was a kind and sensitive person, who also had a tendency to respond unnecessarily strongly to any significant news or event. Keeping her reaction to the Christmas incident in London in mind, I realised that I should keep the information about my recent encounter with an extraterrestrial being to myself, for now.

I entered the kitchen. A rich scent of fruity tea lingered in the air.

'Hello, mum.' I kissed her on the cheek.

'Hello, dear! How was work? Did you like your seminar? You look exhausted.' She looked slightly worried, as usual.

'Yeah, I am; it has been a long day. Work was fine. We… We had an exciting discussion and the seminar ran a bit later than usual, so I missed the bus; I took the next one home.'

'Alright, as long as you had a good time.' The look on her face relaxed. 'Fancy a reviving brew?'

'Please.'

I sat down; she rose and put the kettle back on the hob, reaching for the silver tin of Cotswold Fruits in the cupboard. I felt guilty for telling a little lie, but it was for her own good.

'By the way, Cathleen called,' my mother remarked while she poured some loose tea in the strainer. 'She's coming to visit in two weeks, with Lewis.'

'Is she?' I responded. 'Nice, did you ask her to bring something from London?'

'Of course, dear.'

Cathleen, my big sister, who was now a Londoner, had been dating a lawyer called Lewis since last summer. It seemed that their relationship was becoming quite serious. My mother sat next to me and resumed her novel, while handing me a steaming cup of fruit tea. It was delicious.

'You know mum, what you said about next week's Friday – I think I'll go.'

She raised her eyes from the novel. 'Really? That's wonderful! Oh, you know that I didn't want to push you into doing something you wouldn't enjoy, don't you? Just take your time and think about it, okay?'

'I will. Thanks, mum.'

* * *

Having retired to my room, I suddenly remembered all those odd posts on the obscure message boards I occasionally browsed, which dealt with an extraterrestrial being who looked like a man in a suit, flying around the world in a blue police box. I opened my laptop and started reading some of the messages again. The descriptions fit perfectly to the man and his spaceship: it was him – it had to be him, I was absolutely sure about it. The only question was – when I was going to meet him next, and how?


End file.
